Folklore, legends, myths and fairy tales have followed childhood through the ages, for every healthy youngster has a wholesome and instinctive love for stories fantastic, marvelous and manifestly unreal. The winged fairies of Grimm and Andersen have brought more happiness to childish hearts than all other human creations.

Yet the old time fairy tale, having served for generations, may now be classed as "historical" in the children's library; for the time has come for a series of newer "wonder tales" in which the stereotyped genie, dwarf and fairy are eliminated, together with all the horrible and blood-curdling incidents devised by their authors to point a fearsome moral to each tale. Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder tales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incident.

Having this thought in mind, the story of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" was written solely to please children of today. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out.

Jan Van Quirm wrote:I've read the sequel (Return to Oz? I was about 9 I think ) and that was wonderful

There was a movie by that name, but it was actually a combination of a couple of the Oz books. There isn't actually a book in the series called 'Return To Oz'.

Oz worksMain: List of Oz books

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)
The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904)
Queer Visitors from the Marvelous Land of Oz (1905, comic strip depicting 27 stories)
Ozma of Oz (1907)
Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz (1908)
The Road to Oz (1909)
The Emerald City of Oz (1910)
The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1913)
Little Wizard Stories of Oz (1913, collection of 6 short stories)
Tik-Tok of Oz (1914)
The Scarecrow of Oz (1915)
Rinkitink in Oz (1916)
The Lost Princess of Oz (1917)
The Tin Woodman of Oz (1918)
The Magic of Oz (1919, posthumously published)
Glinda of Oz (1920, posthumously published)

“Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions.” – Blaise Pascal

This was my favourite book as a child. My father taught me to read at a young age so I'd read this cover to cover numerous times by the time I was 6. Haven't read it in years.... may have to dig out my copy from my mums loft

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. H. L. Mencken

Jan Van Quirm wrote:Wow - that's quite a list! Baum must be one of Terry's heroes!

I've seen bits of Return so that's why it stuck as that's much more recent - I know it still had Dorothy and the Scarecrow, Tinman and Lion in it.

Wasn't the Return film a bit more crazy though?

Well in that they had Dorothy carted off to a psychiatric hospital to be given electric shock treatment. And the bad witch in the story used to cut off her enemies heads and wear them in place of her own head.

“Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions.” – Blaise Pascal

Jan Van Quirm wrote:Wow - that's quite a list! Baum must be one of Terry's heroes!

I've seen bits of Return so that's why it stuck as that's much more recent - I know it still had Dorothy and the Scarecrow, Tinman and Lion in it.

Wasn't the Return film a bit more crazy though?

Well in that they had Dorothy carted off to a psychiatric hospital to be given electric shock treatment. And the bad witch in the story used to cut off her enemies heads and wear them in place of her own head.